She is the final handiwork of creation. Divinely chiselled with total attentiveness, Beki personifies charm, class and candour. No man looks at Beki in a hurry. At the sight of Beki, eyes brighten, gaze and succumb to her spell. Beki is an overdose of elegance. Nature wasn’t only prodigal in lavishing beauty on her, nature was also profligate in gifting Beki with overabundant intelligence.
Beki is the ideal image of womanhood: strong, caring, hard-working, resourceful and motherly. But because she won’t allow herself to be pushed around by insecure male chauvinists, the society labels her arrogant and unmarriageable.
Trust Beki; she won’t allow any of that to bog her down. At 29, she has a plum job with a leading multinational telecommunication firm in Lagos. And she’s currently on her PhD in Addictive Psychiatry.
This breezy morning, Beki is on her way to pick a classmate, Solo, en route to conducting a fieldwork entitled, “Political Leaders and Ape Behaviour.” She pulls up in front of Solo’s apartment and calls him on her phone. “I’m outside,” she said. “Ok, I’m coming out,” Solo mumbled amid a mouthful of porridge as he grabbed a bottle of water and hurried out of the door.
Solo: (Looks at Beki’s ‘tear-rubber’ car admiringly and hops in) You this girl, how many cars do you have? (Gulps down his bottle of water, belches.)
Beki: Who are you calling a girl? You’re only 27 and you’re calling me, your aunty, ‘this girl’.
Solo: I don’t have time for any ‘story for the gods’ this morning. How many cars do you have is what I asked you, simple.
Beki: (Smiles and pulls out unto the road, humming Simi’s song, “JAMB Question.”)
Solo: (Laughs) Grandma, please, let’s pick Kiko down the road.
Beki: Ah, fake Interrogator Ibrahim MaGOON; I’m ready for you this morning but you must first tell me why I need to pick Kiko when he has a car.
Solo: Sorry o, Oga madam, Kiko just feels that as the three of us are in the same study group, we should go to the zoo together in one car to conduct the research on gorillas and chimpanzees.
Beki: Oh, ok. No problem.
Solo: But seriously speaking, Beki, isn’t it shocking the way Psychiatry and Psychology are establishing links between our leaders’ behaviours and those of apes? Behavioural studies are clearly unmasking our leaders as undomesticated pigs lacking humanity.
(Beki pulls up at Kiko’s house while Solo goes in to call him. Within minutes, both emerge and hop into the car.)
Kiko: (Greets Beki and congratulates her on her brand new SUV as she reverses and pulls out of Kiko’s compound.)
Beki: (Presses a button on the stereo and Sunny Okosuns reincarnates in the car, singing: “Which way, Nigeria?)
Kiko: Before we get to the zoo, let’s quickly reassess the methodology we’ve adopted for this research.
(Beki and Solo answer in the affirmative.)
Solo: (Clears his throat.) We’re looking at two major political parties, the ruining All-Pervasive-Congress and the opposition Peoples-Dehumanising-Party. We’re looking at how their leadership behaviours are similar to those of gorillas and chimpanzees populating our experimental groups.
(Beki pulls up at the gate of the zoo, pays the gate fee for three. Being Monday morning, there are few visitors in the zoo. They get out of the vehicle and walk to the far right wing of the zoo marked, “Primates.” They stop at the cage of gorillas. Beside it is the cage of chimpanzees. Taking notes and snapping pictures, the three researchers watch the gorillas and chimps.)
Beki: I suggest we put gorillas and the leaders of the Peoples-Dehumanising-Party in the same category.
Solo: Why?
Beki: Because weighing between 140 and 200 kilograms, and a height spanning 1.5 to 1.8 meters, gorillas are twice bigger and much taller than chimpanzees just like the Peoples-Dehumanising-Party prides itself as the biggest party in and outside the land – having ruled the jungle for 16 unbroken years.
Kiko: Does that mean that chimps are inferior to gorillas?
Beki: No, far from it. Though smaller in size, chimps are much more intelligent than gorillas because they’ve larger brains. After humans, chimps are believed to be the most intelligent in the animal kingdom because they’ve the second largest brain compared to body size. Likewise, though smaller in stature when compared to the blundering Peoples-Dehumanising-Party, the All-Pervasive-Congress is deadlier than coronavirus.
Solo: Scientific data show that both Man and ape have 98.7% DNA similarities. Chimps live longer than gorillas and look more like humans because they’ve no hair on their faces, palms, soles and they’re omnivores, unlike gorillas who are herbivores.
Beki: But do these mean the All-Pervasive-Congress is better than the Peoples-Dehumanising-Party?
Kiko: Absolutely not!
Beki: Ok. Let’s perform our proposed experiments, using our hypotheses.
(She brings out a big bunch of bananas from her bag. She throws the bunch into the gorillas’ cage. As it landed, younger gorillas scampered towards it, but the patriarch of the troop let out a sinister grunt from a distance and all the younger ones scurried back to safety. Slowly, the patriarch marches majestically towards the bunch, picks it up and retires to his domain in the cage. He sits down, leans back against a rock and crosses his legs at the knees. He chuckles as he wolfs the bananas.)
Solo: How is this gorilla behaviour different from the behaviours of the three patriarchs that led the Peoples-Dehumanising-Party for 16 years?
Kiko: You’re right, Solo. How do you explain the billions of dollars spent to produce darkness during the era of the Pin-Di-Pi and the astronomical corruption perpetrated therein, especially by its three convicted governors, Ebory, Lurky and Alarms? Piita and other bandit governors were indulged by Chief Ebora, who was the progenitor of corruption in this democratic era.
Solo: OMG! How does a country survive all these?
Beki: It’s well. But we’re not here to lament, we’re here to conduct research. Let’s conduct the experiment on chimps, please.
(She throws four plastic bottles of soda into the chimps’ cage. Time freezes. No chimps dare move towards the drinks. They all keep silent as the Big Daddy steps forward, puts two of the drinks in his left armpit and ambles away with the two others in his right hand. He opens one of the drinks and plugs it to his mouth, scratching his head and back in enjoyment. An infant chimp who has been very thirsty and famished all day crawls up to his father and touches the bottle gingerly. The father grabs the infant by the hand and flings it away. The infant hits its head against a tree branch before dropping into a pond beneath with a bloodied head.)
Solo: W-h-a-t!!! Can you beat that heartlessness!?
Kiko: Political leaders do worse evil.
Beki: What can we deduce from these experiments?
Kiko: This is how the All-Pervasive-Congress has flung the country under the bus and cared not if coronavirus wipes off the entire population or Boko Haram swallows the North or flood washes Eko into the lagoon or herdsmen turn the South into a river of blood or poverty kills more than insecurity or the East is swept away by erosion or pollution suffocates the South-South or looting strangulates Lagos Assembly.
Solo: What then does the All-Pervasive-Congress care for?
Beki: Power!
Kiko: And looting!
Solo: Does it then mean that apes are better than the political leaderships being researched?
Beki: Solo and his JAMB questions!
Kiko: Apes are better, their leaders didn’t kill. But the Pin-Di-Pi leadership massacred the Ode community. And the All-Pervasive-Congress-controlled soldiers killed innocent policemen and civilians in Tabaraba for arresting a kidnapper. The All-Pervasive-Congress has refused to release the killer-soldiers for prosecution while madness has peaked in Edom.
Beki: Is this CHANGE or CHAIN?
(To be concluded)
Credit: Tunde Odesola, Punch
If you have not read part 1 of the essay, read it here: The land of shameless leaders, By Tunde Odesola